Hi, I'm LeVar Burton, and this is LeVar Burton Reed.

In every episode I hand pick a different piece of short fiction and read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will tell.

You know sometimes I want a short story to just transport me, to fully immerse me in another time or place, to give me a whole set of characters who feel so real that they become my friends, family, my enemies in just a few thousand words.

And Louis Alberto Ureya can construct a short story that will do exactly that.

This one is from his collection entitled The Water Museum.

Luis is going to take us to the town of El Rosario in Cinelloa, Mexico.

It was historically a mining town, rich and silver and gold, and has a beautifully

baroque church with an altar covered in gold leaf that was rebuilt after the original structure was on the verge of collapse.

Louis's father is from the town and Louis has come back to it again and again in his

writing sometimes calling it Tres Carones. This version of the town is all his own

and he's given El Rosario a graffiti artist in residence, Mr. Mendoza, who acts

as the town's people's conscience and calls them out in their hypocrisy and wrongdoing. Louise writes all's gives us the perfect level of detail so that each of his characters is

immediately familiar to us. If you've never encountered his writing you're in

for a treat.

Luis Alberto Ureya is the author you're in for a treat.

Louise Alberto Ureia is the author of 17 books.

And he's been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for non-fiction,

a member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame and a Guggenheim fellow.

So bare.

His most recent novel is called Good Night Irene, the story of a woman who joins the Red Cross during World War II and finds herself on the front lines.

The story is inspired by Louis's own mother who worked as a donut dolly, serving coffee and donuts right at the heart of the action.

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